This invention relates generally to cigarette cases for holding a quantity of cigarettes and is particularly directed to a microcomputer controlled cigarette dispenser which constantly monitors and analyzes an individual user's smoking habits and uses a variety of clinically proven techniques to wean the smoker gradually and systematically from his smoking habit.
The physical hazards of cigarette smoking are well known and their consumption discouraged by health authorities. The reduction of cigarette smoking is desirable in itself because it is well-known that the damage due to cigarette smoking is cumulative and dose related. In addition to the danger of fire associated with smoking, medical authorities have shown beyond doubt that there is a greater incidence of heart, lung and throat ailments including cancer among smokers than among non-smokers. In addition, non-smokers who are in the vicinity of a cigarette smoker are exposed to the irritation and possible health hazard of the smoke thus produced. Furthermore, smoking can be a costly habit particularly in the case of a heavy smoker. Thus, ever increasing numbers of smokers have undertaken efforts to reduce, if not to completely stop, cigarette consumption.
Attempts at giving up the cigarette smoking habit have ranged from the use of deterrent drugs to professional counseling and even to hypnosis. These various approaches have, in general, all suffered from various shortcomings. Individual professional and group counselling have met with varying degrees of success, although the former is frequently expensive and the latter frequently inconvenient, requiring time consuming travel and attendance at meetings. In addition, mass communications campaigns sponsored by the government and various nonprofit organizations have attempted to bring the dangers of smoking to the attention of the general public with limited success. Finally, hypnosis is relied upon as an anti-smoking aid, however, its nature discourages many smokers from attempting this approach. Hypnosis and other treatment programs are episodic and not directly available to the smoker at each moment of decision to light up. Nicotine substitution by prescription by a physician is costly and has undesirable side effects.
Other anti-smoking efforts have centered not so much on the individual, but rather on a device for discouraging or inhibiting smoking. Such devices frequently include a cigarette container having a time controlled locking mechanism which provides the smoker with access to the cigarettes only at predetermined times. The use of such devices is based upon the theory that the cigarette smoking habit can best be terminated, or at least controlled, by a gradual withdrawal rather than completely stopping all at once. According to this approach, the craving for cigarettes will gradually subside until it is lost completely. This type of device, however, confronts the smoker with a cigarette abstinence situation, at least temporarily, and frequently proves too much, particularly for the high rate smoker who then circumvents the system by acquiring another source of cigarettes. Thus, after an initial period of use, this type of device is typically discarded by the smoker who is unable to accept and deal with the complete denial, albeit temporary in nature, of access to a cigarette.
On the other hand, however, if a smoker continues to have access to his cigarettes, he will be less likely to bypass the device and rely upon an alternate source of cigarettes. To date, efforts to discourage the use of cigarettes involving a cigarette dispensing device have not made use of this and other fundamental principles of human psychology. For example, from infancy onward, the rate and direction of a person's psychological and social development largely depend on his increasing capacities to delay impulses, assess the realistic consequences of an act and its alternatives, and defer immediate gratification of an impulse if reason so dictates. As a "stop and think" mode of behavior becomes more firmly established, behavior becomes more adaptive. More mature, albeit delayed, pleasure derives from successful adaptation, mastery over the impulse and, importantly, the approval of others. This delayed form of gratification emerges and reinforces further growth only so long as the frustration of giving up immediate gratification is not intolerable. If the frustration is too great or immediate gratification is too readily available, growth does not occur.
From a psychological standpoint, this is the smoker's dilemma. At the moment he has the pressing urge to satisfy his addictive craving for immediate gratification and reaches for a cigarette or puffs on it, his capacities to delay, exercise mature thought and judgment, and wisely consider the long term consequences of his act are relatively impaired. He literally cannot "stop and think." Immediate gratification from a cigarette is too readily available, and his frustration is too great to be overcome by a relatively weakened capacity to delay and too small an expectation for the more mature form of delayed gratification. Thus, smokers who want to stop give in to their impulses to smoke despite co-existing strong contrary motivations to stop or cut down. They do so impulsively, automatically, or sometimes after a conscious and difficult struggle to resist. Many smokers simultaneously feel a deep-seated inner helplessness, embarrassment and sense of failure at their inability to resist their irrational urges to obtain immediate gratification and achieve mastery over their habit and enjoy delayed gratification.
The present invention is intended to take advantage of the aforementioned psychological principles in providing a device and method which provides various advantages not available in the prior art to discourage smoking and to assist one in reducing, and even eliminating, his dependence upon cigarettes. The present invention operates directly and repeatedly at each moment of decision to smoke a cigarette by forcing the smoker to reconsider his decision following the initial urge to smoke by temporarily delaying access to each cigarette while providing the smoker with up-to-date information regarding past cigarette consumption. In addition, the smoker is encouraged on an individual basis to inhale reduced amounts of smoke once he or she gives in to the urge to smoke and selects a cigarette. The present invention does not compel the smoker to quit altogether, but rather allows him to control the pace of his withdrawal according to individual needs and lessens the possibility of complete discouragement and the giving up of the effort to stop smoking. Access to cigarettes is not completely barred as in other smoking inhibiting devices so as to reduce the incentive of the smoker to circumvent the device by buying more cigarettes and thus giving up on trying to kick the habit. Using a microcomputer, the cigarette dispenser and method of the present invention constantly monitors and analyzes a smoker's changing pattern of cigarette consumption and, on the basis of the information thus gathered and at a pace determined by the smoker's own progress, uses a variety of clinically proven techniques to wean the smoker gradually and systematically from this life-threatening habit. Although capable of performing many complex functions, the programmable cigarette dispenser is as easy to carry as an ordinary pocket cigarette case and provides a private and personalized "anti-smoking clinic in a box" which can be used alone or to supplement conventional smoking cessation programs. Finally, while the present invention is disclosed in terms of its use in a portable cigarette dispenser, it has application in any container which holds a substance for which limited, or reduced, use of or total abstinence is desired.